


I should've worshipped him sooner

by beans_on_toast



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Catholic Guilt, First Kiss, Guilt, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Reference to Temporary Character Death, Religious Conflict, because catholic guilt, reference to recklessness as penance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26360260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beans_on_toast/pseuds/beans_on_toast
Summary: He knew he should move. Should tense, grab for his saif. But he was too tired to pretend he didn't know who stood in the room. Too tired to pretend he didn’t know the sound of the boots in the hallway. As if he didn’t know every sound this man made. He is tired of this dance they are playing and he’s not too above admitting his words this morning had more to do with that than the actual subject matter.(or Nicolo is a guilty Catholic mess and Yusuf is done)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 62
Kudos: 425





	I should've worshipped him sooner

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this [tumblr post](https://whumpster-dumpster.tumblr.com/post/180738459087/character-a-tilting-character-bs-chin-up-to-get-a) and then this popped out? 
> 
> I don't know, I'm just in love with these two idiots.
> 
> Title from Hozier, 'Take me to Church'
> 
> Trigger warning: reference to hurting/allowing oneself to be hurt due to guilt. No description of the violence.

Yusuf has finished eating and retired to bed by the time Nicolo returns. He tried to sketch in the soft candle light, stretched out over his thin mattress. But his fingers are twitching and when he allows his mind to wander, his hands sketch eyes he doesn’t want to see. Not now. He closes his journal in a huff, shaking his head. As if it would shake the words out of his head. The echoing of the poison he’d spat, his temper getting the better of him. 

Yusuf pressed the flat of his palms to his eyes. He idly wondered if he should snuff out the candle and try to sleep, even though he knew he would not be able to sleep alone. Not anymore. He sat, his elbows on his knees and hands to his face when he heard the footsteps outside the door, the door swing open. A pause. Swing shut. A falling lock tumbler. 

_Nicolo_

He knew he should move. Should tense, grab for his saif. But he was too tired to pretend he didn't know who stood in the room. Too tired to pretend he didn’t know the sound of the boots in the hallway. As if he didn’t know every sound this man made. He is tired of this dance they are playing and he’s not too above admitting his words this morning had more to do with _that_ than the actual subject matter.

Yusuf opened his eyes and there he was, his companion. His friend. _Is that all he is?_ Nicolo’s back was to him. He kept his cloak on, his hair was wet. _Did he bathe?_ Yusuf hears him moving things, busying his hands. It’s a strange sound. Nicolo is still, quiet. He sits and watches. Patient. Allows silences to build between them until they swell and burst, responds to Yusuf’s jokes and cajoling with a careful eyebrow lift and half hidden smiles. The Genoan moving without purpose, lifting and depositing things about their small room. This is wrong. Something is wrong.

‘Nicolo.’ The movement stutters for a moment. A deep breath. Begins again.

‘Have you eaten?’ His Arabic is coming along, but it sounds off. There is a strange lilt to his tone Yusuf cannot place. He can place this man’s breathing in a room filled with slumbering bodies, but he cannot place this tone. Yusuf stands, placing his journal to the side.

‘Nicolo.’ The stuttering stillness again. A moved shoulder. Nicolo is pinching the bridge of his nose. Yusuf cannot see it, but he knows the movement. Centering himself, pulling back control. People often mistake his companion’s quiet demoner as a sign of stoicism or shyness, a stillness. _‘You monster,’ Yusuf had bitten out, around blood and missing teeth, all those years ago. ‘You cold hearted butcherer.’_ How was he to have known the depths of the sea? There is deep emotion swirling underneath Nicolo’s quiet movements. Barely contained feelings that he holds in tight reins. Yusuf’s fingers twitch again, guiltily. 

‘This morning-’ he begins, but reads the instant tension in the other man's shoulders and stops. Begins again. ‘Look at me, please.’ No movement. ‘Nico, please.’

Yusuf suspects that it’s the use of his pet name, Nico, that makes the man turn. The way his eyes burned when Yusuf had first said it, _‘Oh, be kind to our poor Nico. He’s a shy lad.’_ There was colour high on Nicolo’s cheeks and Yusuf couldn’t stop himself winking, even as he felt his stomach drop.

Tonight there is something else burning in Nicolo’s eyes. Something raw and jagged and Yusuf feels as though it cuts him. He sucks in his breath, moves towards his friend. He places his hand gently on Nicolo’s pale jaw, his fingers stroking absently against his beard. The twitching in them settles. Nicolo releases a tight breath, closes his eyes, and leans into the touch. They have been moving towards this for some time. A softening and casualness in their touching, hands on shoulders and backs, light brushes of arms and legs. But this was different. Yusuf felt the pressure in his chest, as though he’d been hit with a wave. He takes in Nicolo’s face, the sweep of his cheeks and arch of his nose. He could draw them with his eyes closed, but now he wants nothing more than to _look_.

A dark shadow catches Yusuf’s eye, just at the edge of Nicolo’s jaw. Yusuf presses his thumb to it and Nicolo flinches slightly. Blood. Tacky and dark. Fresh. Yusuf feels the bile rise in the back of his throat. He knows the feel of Nicolo’s blood on his hands.

The breath rattles in his lungs and Nicolo looks away, refusing to meet Yusuf’s suddenly intense gaze. Soft fingers move across Nicolo’s jaw, his cheek, the hollows of his eyes. Those eyes. _Those eyes_. Soft movements, a tic of his jaw. He had bathed. He had tried to hide this. No words are said, but Yusuf knows. He _knows_ , tracing wounds that are no longer there. Violence that he cannot see, but can see all too well. He knows how violence looks on this face and it burns him. Their breaths mingle as Yusuf leans in, his fingers finishing their meandering path to land on Nicolo’s lower lip. It trembles.

‘What happened?’ He whispers in soft zeneize. Nicolo’s tongue dips out of his mouth, a nervous movement, catching the edge of Yusuf’s finger. Yusuf’s tongue is dry, suddenly too big for his mouth. Has he forgotten how to breathe? Does he need to breathe? Because he feels as though air is trivial. He will revive. But the soft touch of Nicolo’s tongue, the promise that it holds. He feels he might _need_ that and maybe, just maybe, he would drown to get it.

‘Nothing.’ A shrug of Nicolo’s shoulders, his breath tickling Yusuf’s now trembling thumb. A flash of something, a glint in the ocean depths. And Yusuf knows. Nicolo had mentioned once, almost offhand, of the monks he’d known who had encouraged closeness to God through pain. Yusuf had stared at the man in confusion. How would pain bring them one closer to Allah? Nicolo had shrugged in much the same way he did now. _‘To repent, for your sins.’_

Yusuf’s own words, spoken this morning, spoken a lifetime ago, echo in his own ears. 

_‘I’m sorry,’ he had whispered this morning.  
‘That doesn’t make you forgiven!’ he’d roared back._

So he had gone to give penance. Yusuf brought his other hand to Nicolo’s face, stroking away unseen bruises and cuts. Slowly, so slowly, he leans close and brushes his lips across Nicolo’s cheeks. His nose. His now closed eyelids. Nicolo stills in his hands.

‘You cannot repent for the whole of Christendom, Nico.’ Yusuf whispers, so close to Nicolo now he feels as though the other man is breathing his words in. Filling his chest in a deep, ragged breath.

‘What about just for myself, then?’ Nicolo’s words flow back into his own mouth and it is a sharp pain in his chest. _That doesn’t make you forgiven._ Yusuf does not look down. Nicolo’s hands are light as he traces over Yusuf’s tunic. He presses against his abdomen, his sternum, lazily echoing Yusuf’s earlier soft trails across Nicolo’s face. Nicolo’s hands brush across his throat. Yusuf feels a flash of heat. There are no scars, no signs of the blood and pain and screaming. Yusuf imagines he can smell the ozone in the air, hear the sharp clash of metal. And he reads the pain in ocean deep eyes. _I know how this violence looks on you and it burns me._

‘Nico, my Nico.’ Yusuf moves his hands from Nicolo’s jaw, down his neck (and oh, how he wishes he could pause on that spot that causes Nicolo to shiver. How he wants to add it to the growing map of this man’s body), down his arms, gripping the other man’s hands and bringing them to his own lips. ‘You are forgiven.’ Saying the words, he knows they are true. He wants to be angry, wants to pull the righteous fury he once wore around his shoulders like a cloak. He was _right_ and Nicolo was _wrong_. But he knows Nicolo now, and he knows that is not all Nicolo is. He wants to burn with his anger, with the pain of it, with the death he has seen. But the ocean in Nicolo’s eyes has put it out.

‘That’s not how it works.’ Nicolo shakes his head, swallows hard. He looks at his hands, still drawn to Yusuf’s lips. He looks at Yusuf’s lips and his tongue draws lightly over his lip again, as if of its own free will. ‘Your heart is too good _al-Tayyib_. Forgiveness is earned.’

‘We do what is right, now.’ Yusuf reminds him, parroting Nicolo's own words back at him. As the dust had settled, as the days blurred into months, into years; they had chosen. He presses his forehead against Nicolo’s. He had seen the kindness in this man.

‘It- It may not be enough.’ Nicolo’s words are so soft, Yusuf is not sure if he’s heard them or felt them. _For all that I’ve done._ Nicolo does not say it, but it is there. In their shared breath. 

‘Lucky then, I suppose, we have all the time in the world.’ Yusuf rubs his thumbs over Nicolo's knuckles. There is the quirk of a smile on Nicolo’s lips. Yusuf does not hesitate. He chases it, pressing his lips to taste it. And as Nicolo presses back, Yusuf burns again. 

But this is something new.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] I should've worshipped him sooner](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26973715) by [hnghh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hnghh/pseuds/hnghh)




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